Tag: security

There is a story spreading on the internet of a brute force attack hitting WordPress sites and trying to break into your site. A brute force password attack happens when a program tries to guess your password by simply trying lots of different possibilities – and making educated guesses. This is even more important at … Continue reading “The brute force attack scare”

Take a moment to read before you click download or you could get something unexpected! Have you noticed when downloading software from some sites (particularly freeware or library sites) that the real download button is getting harder to find? Here is an example from cnet where there are three download buttons and a text download … Continue reading “Too many download buttons”

A security and maintenance update for WordPress was released last night and addresses a number of bugs and a small set of security patches. One of the security patches fixes a problem that has been in all previous versions of WordPress so it is particularly important you apply this as soon as possible. If you … Continue reading “WordPress release 3.5.1 is out”

There are many reasons to have a test site that only you can see. Unfortunately this may mean that you can’t make everything work properly if you rely on other services such as PayPal IPN (Instant Payment Notification). Make sure your customers can access or download their purchase immediately after they payment is made to … Continue reading “PayPal IPN on you test site”

During your regular website maintenance you might come across the ‘WordPress Internal Path Error’. Don’t panic, it’s not a critical issue – but don’t ignore it either. In my series on doing your own regular maintenance and health checks I mention that it is a good idea to use a service like Sucuri.net to get … Continue reading “Solving the WordPress internal path error”

Passwords need to be strong and secure but sometimes they also need to be easy to remember. I admit I use a password tool to help with most of my passwords called Keepass and have written about it previously to manage passwords. It generates unique impossible to guess and impossible to remember passwords and manages … Continue reading “Easy to remember passwords”

If someone steals the keys to your house, did they just get the keys to your car too? Are the keys to your website sitting on your laptop? This morning I received a great article from BlueHost about securing your website, there are all sorts of things you can do, but an important one that … Continue reading “Start at home to secure your website”

New website vulnerabilities are being found all the time. Use one of the readily available scanning services to keep up to date. I use a great scanning service from Sucuri to check my website whenever I do maintenance. This article is part of a series on regular website maintenance that you can do yourself. Sucuri … Continue reading “Perform a security scan to determine vulnerabilities”

This week some preparation has paid off and although my email server is impacted by a DDOS attack I can still read anything sent to me. You can read more about DDoS in my recent article, including how to prepare for it, but now we will focus on getting your email. So, how do you … Continue reading “Getting your email when you can’t get your email”

Here is a date for the diary if you are using WordPress for your site – November 15th, 2011. The schedule for the next major release of WordPress has been announced. There will still be a series of minor releases for 3.2 We will know the list of new features by the end of August … Continue reading “WordPress 3.3 will be released in November”